In the sun-bleached theater of the absurd known as Katsina State, Governor Dikko Radda has hit upon a stroke of political genius so profoundly vacuous it could only be conceived in the vacuum of a modern Nigerian administration. The proposal? To release 70 suspected bandits from custody under the guise of 'peace' and 'reconciliation.' Because, as any student of history or basic survival knows, the best way to deal with a plague of wolves is to invite the boldest seventy back into the sheepfold, perhaps with a gift basket and a formal apology for the inconvenience of their brief incarceration. It is the kind of logic that makes one wonder if the social contract has been rewritten on a cocktail napkin and then set on fire.

Naturally, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) has emerged from the woodwork to voice its 'opposition.' It is a heartwarming display of performative outrage. The ADC is clutching its collective pearls, decrying the move as a betrayal of the people. While their rhetoric is technically correct, it carries the distinct odor of a political party that simply hasn't been given its turn to mismanage the crisis yet. In the Nigerian political landscape, the 'Opposition' is rarely a moral compass; it is usually just a group of people currently excluded from the treasury, waiting for their chance to implement their own brand of catastrophic failure. They condemn the Governor not because they have a solution for the insecurity ravaging the north, but because condemning things is the only job requirement for a party with no actual power.

Let us deconstruct the Governor’s 'peace' initiative. It is a confession. It is the sound of a state admitting it has lost the monopoly on violence and is now attempting to negotiate a subscription service for safety. By releasing these 'suspected' bandits—a term that, in this context, serves as a legal fig leaf for 'men we caught but are too incompetent to prosecute'—the administration is signaling that justice is negotiable. It is a market transaction. We give you your foot soldiers back, and you, in theory, stop burning down villages for at least a fiscal quarter. It is a delusional cycle where the state pays for peace with the very currency of its own authority, failing to realize that once you start buying back your sovereignty from criminals, the price only ever goes up.

There is a cynical beauty in the wording of these government communiqués. They speak of 'restoring peace,' as if peace were a vintage car you could simply buff out with a little bit of leniency. They ignore the reality that these seventy individuals were not arrested for unpaid parking tickets. In a region where banditry has become a more stable career path than agriculture, releasing suspects back into the wild is less a gesture of goodwill and more a recruitment drive funded by the taxpayer. The Governor seems to believe that mercy is a tool of governance, forgetting that mercy without justice is merely an invitation to further chaos. But then again, expecting a governor to understand the nuances of political philosophy is like expecting a vulture to appreciate the aesthetics of the carcass it’s picking clean.

The ADC, for its part, warns that this move will demoralize the security forces. One has to admire the optimism required to believe the security forces aren't already demoralized. They spend their days chasing shadows across the scrubland, only for the politicians at the top to open the back door of the prison as soon as the cameras are turned off. It is a revolving door of misery where the only winners are the bandits, who get a free meal and a nap before returning to their lucrative trade, and the politicians, who get to claim they are 'engaging in dialogue.' Dialogue, in this instance, is a euphemism for the total abdication of the state's primary duty.

This is the quintessential Nigerian tragedy: a choice between a government that surrenders to criminals and an opposition that uses that surrender as a stump speech. There are no heroes here, only various grades of opportunists. The Governor’s plan is a testament to the intellectual bankruptcy of a ruling class that treats governance as a series of short-term bribes. The ADC’s protest is a testament to the hollowness of a political system where the only alternative to incompetence is louder, more indignant incompetence. Meanwhile, the people of Katsina are left to wonder which is more dangerous: the bandits in the bush, or the geniuses in the statehouse who think those bandits just need a second chance. It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetically predictable. But in the end, this is what humanity deserves for letting people in suits decide who gets to break the law and who has to live in fear of it.